LOUISIANA GOV. Bobby Jindal nailed it Wednesday with his tweet about the president’s decision to postpone implementation of a major portion of Obamacare.

“You know things are bad when you can’t even successfully implement your own bad ideas,” he told the Twitterverse.

President Obama is putting off the federal health care law’s insurance mandate for employers next year, delaying it until 2015. It’s an admission of the obvious — this law is a train wreck. It has great potential to inflict harm on an economy that’s trying to recover.

But it also shows that the president is a slick politician.

The mid-term elections are scheduled for 2014. It’s better for the Democrats in Congress to push the pain off until 2015 than risk a backlash at the polls from disgruntled voters.

The delay comes as Mr. Obama is stepping up efforts to educate the public about enrollment this fall. The announcement doesn’t affect other coverage tools in Obamacare — the individual mandate and the new subsidized insurance markets. But it could boost the cost to taxpayers if more people end up seeking subsidies instead of getting covered on the job.

The president and Democrats who ramrodded this flawed legislation through Congress didn’t understand all the ramifications. Now they’re getting educated.

Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more “full-time equivalent” employees to provide affordable insurance to their workers or pay $2,000 per year per employee in penalties. Small businesses with fewer than 50 workers are exempt.

The law defines someone who works 30 hours or more a week as full-time. Some business groups were pushing for a 40-hour requirement. Otherwise, many employers — including a lot of school districts — said they would have to cut employee hours to escape the mandate penalties.

With the delay, businesses won’t be penalized next year for not covering workers. Such temporary relief from regulatory burden is good, as complying with the rules is complex.

But on the flip side, it could raise the price tag for taxpayers by making more people eligible for subsidies and drive up the deficit. That’s because the employer mandate’s penalties were expected to reduce government red ink by $5 billion in 2014. That money just vanished.

It’s unclear how much Americans will pay if they choose to buy their health insurance from state marketplaces known as exchanges. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has received rate filings from insurers. But it won’t release rates until September. That’s when contracts are supposed to be signed. However, that’s only a month before the exchanges are supposed to be up and running Oct. 1.

Federal officials say mum’s the word for now — they claim they’re negotiating with insurers to get lower rates. Perhaps. But there’s genuine fear that those rates will mean bigger out-of-pocket expenses for patients and less choice in physicians and hospitals.

Thus Mr. Jindal got it right. It’s a bad idea. Instead of delaying a portion of Obamacare, tossing most of it out the window and starting over is better.